1. Does anyone know when the Peace and Freedom Party Nomination Convention is? How much of a contender is Nader in this considering he won the non-bindin g promary.

2. August 2-3.

3. The Convention will be held here in Sacramento, California.

   In my humble opinion, the race is too close to call. My choices for president are: (1) Ralph Nader; (2) Cynthia McKinney; (3) Brian Moore; (4) Gloria La Riva. That is my orientation and that is how I intend to vote at the Convention if I am elected to the County and State Central Committees and become a delegate.

   Philip L. Sawyer, Member
   Sacramento County Central Committee
   (Appointed Incumbent)
   Peace and Freedom Party of California

4. Thanks Phil for the reply. I do hope Nader success in the nomination of the P&F Party but I also hope LaRiva does well in delivering her message.

5. VIGOROUS WRITE-IN CONTEST FOR P&F NOMINATION.
   Let me update this with this afternoon’s news. I was told by a Nader organizer that they believe they have qualified at least 40 write-in candidates for Peace and Freedom Party Central Committee in 9 districts. (It will take a day or two for local Registrars of Voters to verify signatures on the petitions turned in before today’s deadline for candidates representing various presidential candidates.) Many of the candidates are directly opposed by write-in candidates backing other Presidential candidates, mainly La Riva. (Those elected to the Central Committee in June are the delegates at the August convention.)
   If the Nader CC candidates all win their races, Nader will be set for a first or second ballot victory at the Convention on August 2 & 3. If each Nader candidate opposed by a La Riva candidate loses, La Riva will likely get the most votes on the first ballot, and after that – well, we shall see. A total of around 90 CC members will be elected statewide.
   Usually, write-in candidates for P&F central committee need two or three votes to win. But usually, they are struggling against inertia rather than against each other. Nader, and probably others, will be using direct-mail appeals to voters asking them to write in the names of their central committee candidates in the districts with contests. Probably even more effective will be in-person precinct work. For example, until 27 May in some counties a voter may walk up to the counter at the Registrar’s office, hand over an absentee ballot application, get the ballot handed back, mark the ballot, and seal it in an envelope and hand it back to the clerk. I would expect some campaigns to ferry voters to the elections offices to do just this.
   So while the rest of the state goes through a sleepy primary election, in several districts there will be ferocious struggles for votes in the Peace and Freedom Party. Last I looked, the districts with more write-in candidates than seats were Contra Costa and Santa Cruz counties (countywide), Alameda County 3rd Supervisorial District, San Francisco 12th Assembly District, and the 47th and 48th (and maybe 46th) Assembly Districts in Los Angeles County. [Some of these districts may not have competitive campaigns if too many nomination signatures are found invalid.] There are also two districts with more on-the-ballot candidates than seats, in San Francisco’s 13th AD and Alameda County’s 5th SD.
   A few dozen votes, or at the most a few hundred, will largely determine who gets the Peace and Freedom Party nomination in California. Since each vote at the convention counts, I understand there will also be direct-mail and other campaigning directed at all the candidates for Central Committee, many of whom are not committed yet to any specific candidate for President.
   This campaigning will continue at least until the middle of July. Because write-in votes are counted so slowly, the winners of the local CC races will probably not be known until the final canvass of the vote at the beginning of July.
   All four of the candidates (La Riva, Nader, McKinney, and Moore) are expected to be on the ballot in multiple states in November. But whichever of them gets the Peace and Freedom Party nomination will get more votes from California than any other state.
   A special difficulty confronts McKinney in her push for the P&F nomination. The Nader campaign has conceded the Green nomination to McKinney, and almost all her campaign workers are registered members of the Green Party, unable to vote in the Peace and Freedom Party primary. Many of the Nader CC candidates have switched from Green to Peace and Freedom recently.
   -Kevin Akin, South State Chair, Peace and Freedom Party

6. Kevin,

   Thanks for the update I was not aware of the inner workings of the P&F party but it does indeed sound interesting. Where do you stand in the mix of who the P&F party should support for President?

7. Is there at all any concern amongst P&F party members that Nader could be hijacking the party for it’s ballot line while neglecting it’s cause?

8. Laine,
   To answer the last question first, yes, there is such concern, but about all four of the candidates, not just Nader. While Gloria La Riva is a long-time member of P&F and former candidate for governor, and Moore’s running mate Stewart Alexander is not only a party activist but an officer of the State Central Committee and recent candidate for Lieutenant Governor, some are concerned that their supporters may just come to the convention to try to nominate them, but not stay around for the rest of the two-year term to do any work. I think that the relatively small Moore contingent is actually almost all party activists who will continue in that role, and at least several of the La Riva supporters will also stay active. Two La Riva supporters are also running for office, one for Congress and one for State Assembly, and will be on the ballot in November no matter who gets the Presidential nomination.
   The McKinney supporters are another matter, as several are long-time activists, and several others have never been active (though some may be in future). Because McKinney’s campaign in California is based in the Green Party, her campaign has not re-registered anyone Peace and Freedom (to the best of my knowledge) other than a few Democrats.
   There is more concern about the Nader delegates because most of them have not previously been active in the Peace and Freedom Party (though some long-time PFP activists indicate that they intend to vote for Nader). Some are new to electoral activity, and of those at least a few apparently intend to be active. Others were Green Party members until a few weeks (or even days) ago, but were already frustrated with the internal problems in the Green Party, and some had been considering moving to the Peace and Freedom Party anyhow, but finally got around to it when asked by the Nader campaign. (The main thing some of these people had complained about in regard to the Green Party was not so much its positions or rhetoric, but its internal rules. The super-majority requirements for deciding practically anything have hamstrung most of the official party bodies, and almost all the productive activity comes from individuals and informal groups that are not hampered by these rules.)
   The Peace and Freedom Party, while welcoming anyone who supports its platform, has carefully avoided any organized attempt to recruit people from the Greens. The Nader campaign, with most active Nader campaigners having been in the Greens at some time in the past, felt free to ask people to re-register Peace and Freedom. Several hundred people in a handful of counties have switched from Green to Peace and Freedom as a result.
   Interestingly, although Nader is not a socialist of any sort, some of those who switched to Peace and Freedom to help nominate him consider themselves socialists, and have felt a stronger affinity for the explicitly socialist Peace and Freedom Party than for the Greens for some time. Several very active present members of the Peace and Freedom Party’s State Central Committee and county central committees were registered Green until fairly recently, but decided it was not worth working for an organization that would not say it was for socialism.
   Inevitably, as always happens, some of the people elected to the State Central Committee will come to the convention and then never be seen again. As the South State Chair, I am trying to be as welcoming as possible to people supporting all the candidates, and I intend to try to get lots of them to participate in the organizing conference presently planned for December (though it could end up being in early January) to help prepare for the 2010 statewide election. I hope some of them, of all tendencies, will run for Assembly, State Senate, Congress, and statewide offices from Governor to Controller. There are openings for 165 candidates for partisan office in 2010, and that is assuming no contested primary races.
   All four of the candidates for President will be on the ballot in a number of other states, and all are originally (or shortly will be) the nominees of other parties. We know that they are focused on the PFP ballot line for November. But all of them, I believe, have supporters who will stick around and stay active to help present a strong electoral and non-electoral challenge to the powers-that-be in the future.
   (I have decided for whom I will be voting on the first ballot, but I would prefer not to identify that candidate publicly. Like my counterpart CT Weber, the North State Chair, I have been helping all the campaigns even-handedly with getting their CC candidates qualified. I am basically a partisan of the Peace and Freedom Party, and I am not a member of any other political group at this point.)-Kevin Akin

9. Wow, thanks for the speedy reply. It is interesting to learn about the internal workings of such a party. Amazing how such a small party is now coveted for it’s ballot line in such an electorally rich state. I do indeed hope your party has long term activity from the influx of Nader supporters. Mr. Nader won’t be around forever so it is up to us and others to continue a progressive platform in the future. I very much sympathize with socialism and consider myself a socialist however I live in Alaska so I have little contact with parties such as yours and the Alaska Green Party is essentially defunct.

10. Sorry one more question. Can you explain what you and others mean when talking about the first and second ballots? Is this some sort of instant run off form of choosing the nominee of the party?

11. Well, to speak on behalf of the Moore wing, the Socialist Party shares the same views as the Peace and Freedom party, nearly point for point, and a proposal was on the 2007 convention floor and passed commmittee to formally invite the Peace and Freedom party into the SP. However, it never was discussed by the general assembly (perhaps the wrong terminology) due to the SP of Wisconsin taking up nearly all of Sunday. I would think the National Convention would have passed it by now as it was referred to them.

    Though Brian may have primary intentions of getting support in favor of the SP campaign, there are two points to bring out: 1) he is promoting the same platform, and promoting the SP will in turn promote the Peace and Freedom party as they will be sure to keep mentioning both, and 2) Stewart is a strong member of the party who has the intention of using the SP campaign to benefit both; I beleive he’s in favor of the merger though I don’t have direct evidence to back that up on.

    Nader and McKinney are both looking to reform capitalism and stop far short of socialism and the Peace and Freedom party platform. They are both certainly better than Clinton or Obama, but that’s not saying much. Neither wants the same vision as the Peace and Freedom Party. Nader seems to be a political whore at this point, running under every banner he thinks will elect him. He’s not interested in promoting any shared vision.

    Brian and Stewart, they will promote that shared vision. The only two valid choices are Moore and La Riva. I’m afraid I don’t know enough about La Riva to comment on her other than that she is also a socialist in line with the principles of the Peace and Freedom Party.

    Personally, I’d love to see the merger as the two parties are so similar and one has little support in California while the other is geographically limited to California. Either way, Moore and Alexander are sure to promote the best interests of both parties, and though they’re sure to promote the virtues of the Peace and Freedom party whether nominated or not, they’d have a much larger opportunity to be effective if nominated. And as Stewart is originally and primarily a member of the Peace and Freedom party, it would truly be a joint ticket; both parties working together.

12. BTW it’s interesting that Nader has told supporters in the Green Party to not vote for him and that he would not accept a Green Party endorsement even if it were given to him. Does he follow the same line of thought in regards to the P&F Party?Are his supporters within the P&F acting on their own accord or has he openly courted the P&F Party for their ballot line?

13. The Nader-Gonzalez campaign is very, very serious about obtaining the Peace and Freedom Party nomination for president (and working within the Party in the years to come). We are doing everything that we can reasonably do to make it happen!

14. Okay Phil thank! Good luck to getting Nader the nomination and I wish you good success in building the P&F Party.

15. My pleasure. Thank you, also, Laine!

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